禅智内供の鼻と云えば、池の尾で知らない者はない。長さは五六寸あって上唇の上から顋の下まで下っている。形は元も先も同じように太い。云わば細長い腸詰めのような物が、ぶらりと顔のまん中からぶら下っているのである。

　五十歳を越えた内供は、沙弥の昔から、内道場供奉の職に陞った今日まで、内心では始終この鼻を苦に病んで来た。勿論表面では、今でもさほど気にならないような顔をしてすましている。これは専念に当来の浄土を渇仰すべき僧侶の身で、鼻の心配をするのが悪いと思ったからばかりではない。それよりむしろ、自分で鼻を気にしていると云う事を、人に知られるのが嫌だったからである。内供は日常の談話の中に、鼻と云う語が出て来るのを何よりも惧れていた。

　内供が鼻を持てあました理由は二つある。――一つは実際的に、鼻の長いのが不便だったからである。第一飯を食う時にも独りでは食えない。独りで食えば、鼻の先が鋺の中の飯へとどいてしまう。そこで内供は弟子の一人を膳の向うへ坐らせて、飯を食う間中、広さ一寸長さ二尺ばかりの板で、鼻を持上げていて貰う事にした。しかしこうして飯を食うと云う事は、持上げている弟子にとっても、持上げられている内供にとっても、決して容易な事ではない。一度この弟子の代りをした中童子が、嚏をした拍子に手がふるえて、鼻を粥の中へ落した話は、当時京都まで喧伝された。――けれどもこれは内供にとって、決して鼻を苦に病んだ重な理由ではない。内供は実にこの鼻によって傷つけられる自尊心のために苦しんだのである。

There was no one in Ikenoo who had not heard of Zenchi Naigu's nose. Five or six inches long, it hung down from above his upper lip to below his chin. In shape, it was uniformly thick from base to tip. In a word, it dangled from the middle of his face like a long, slender sausage. Now past the age of fifty, from his early days as a novice right up to his present rise to priest of the imperial chapel, Naigu had inwardly suffered constantly over this nose. Outwardly, of course, he still kept up an indifferent front, as though it bothered him very little. This was not simply because he felt it unseemly for a monk—who ought to be devoted solely to yearning for the Pure Land to come—to be worrying about a nose. Rather, it was because he hated the thought of anyone knowing how much it troubled him. What Naigu dreaded above all else was hearing the word "nose" come up in everyday conversation. There were two reasons why Naigu found his nose so intolerable. One was practical: having such a long nose was terribly inconvenient. For one thing, he could not even eat a meal by himself. If he tried, the tip of his nose would plunge straight into the rice bowl. So Naigu had one of his disciples sit across the low dining tray to hold up his nose throughout the meal with a piece of wood about an inch wide and two feet long. Eating in this manner, however, was no easy task—neither for the disciple who held it up, nor for Naigu, whose nose was being held. Once, a young boy acting as a substitute for this disciple sneezed, his hands trembled, and he dropped the nose right into the hot gruel—a story that was gossiped about as far as Kyoto. Yet this was by no means the chief reason Naigu suffered so deeply over his nose. The truth was that he suffered because of the wounded pride this nose inflicted upon him.